Happy Belated Icky-Lovey-Dovey People's Day!

...Whom you want to plonk over the head with an industrial-sized frying pan so that they can go away to lovers' heaven and never disgust you with their Irritating Couple-dom again!


Anyways, Sunday was the day I (clad in discomfitting shoes) scoured the streets of Orchard in search for ingredients to what - I hoped - would make the perfect Valentine's gift for my One And Only. From Selegie to Plaza Sing I stalked; from PS to Heeren I trudged; from Taka to Borders I hobbled. By the end of the journey, I had excruciatingly earned for myself not a few number of blisters on my hence-raw claws.

This experience garnered, I began to wonder whether this was love in a microcosm - besides the obvious obligation of giving, was sufferment and pain inevitable by-products of being in a relationship?

Surely you jest, Ms Coddle: I hear those words ring in your head right now, dear reader. That is too melodramatic a view of things! But Ms Coddle here gets down whenever things don't go her way, and inadvertently, Pessisism that dark monster, sets in. And of late, things on the love front, though not in shambles, haven't been exactly what she'd hoped they'd be.

Wanting to blog on the subject of love and pain, she decides to do a bit of research when she noticed the Straits Times Saturday special on Valentine's whilst digging for a bit of dinner's reading material. The report was on the lack of romance in Singapore - something she felt was really speaking for the state of affairs on her side, but as she read on, she realised that, far from being unromantic, The Boyfriend was really demonstrative of his feelings, albeit in a more subtle way from which she expected from a Romantic Person. In fact, she needn't have looked further than the day before, when he whipped up a delicious meal for the both of them.

The Boyfriend, whipping up a delicious meal.

In its simple, down-to-earth manner, that meal offered much more than any candle-lit dinner, however posh, that money could buy. Yet Ms Coddle, unaware of its value, was temperamental and glassy-eyed at times because there were no fancy candles, no fancy dinnerware, nor any fancy tablerunners. And, perhaps most tellingly, no fancy words. And to add to that tragedy, Ms Coddle, the person whom he was supposed to profess his undying love for, had to actually help in the buying, cutting, chopping, slicing, dicing, scrubbing and wiping of the whole process.But look! What words does one really need when one is presented with a scene like this? (And lip-smackingly good it all was.)

The Lip-Smackingly Good meal

Me looking mousey. Us trying to look happy, not hungry.

And guess what? The Boyfriend came up with a lovely present: a self-made voucher that can be redeemed for a Creative MP3 player in about a month's time!

Read the fine print. (This picture chosen for the tell-tale nail colour - for those in the know.)

I was most impressed by his gift. It had none of the commercial, consumerist smackings most V Day gifts have (my LOTR boxset included) and all the effort, meticulous attention to detail and sweetness a real gift should possess. My lousy present was wrapped in 20 layers of newspaper (all the better to conceal its true identity, but very sec-school), with no accompanying card (no time to write it, though I'd bought all the necessary materials - lame I know). Partly because I expected my present to come the way it has always come - simple, straightforward and no-nonsense - and I guess part of me was half-hearted about it already.

At this point, Barry, if he is going to read this, is likely to go "See? This is what I was telling you all along."His theory is, when your other half doesn't normally shower you with attention and gifts and romantic gestures and suchlike, on the rare occasion that he actually does, you are especially happy and thus, appreciative.

But, if attention, gifts, romantic gestures and suchlike are just the things he does on a regular basis, then you'd come to expect them, even cease to become touched and moved by them.Which is true, and honestly (not to brag, but...) I'm low-maintenance, but girls still want to be Princesses. Or at least this blogger does. Why else do you think she's Ms Molly Coddle? Then again, what's important is that a nice balance is struck, right? So long as the girl feels treasured and the guy not too hassled (or broke), then all should be fine and dandy.